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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
magnitude
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
order of magnitude
▪ That was a problem but this crisis is of a different order of magnitude.
the magnitude of an earthquake (=how powerful it is)
▪ Measuring stations identify the location and magnitude of an earthquake within a few minutes of the event.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
great
▪ Some mills were small, although others were of much greater magnitude.
▪ The last locally-caused power failure of greater magnitude was the Loma Prieta earthquake in October, 1989.
▪ This was a loss of the greatest magnitude.
▪ Most will be of greater magnitude than camping.
▪ In the latter case there is obviously scope for a harmonizing measure of greater magnitude.
sheer
▪ Nevertheless, the sheer magnitude of public investment should still demand that appropriate appraisal techniques are adopted.
▪ The sheer magnitude of the grant guaranteed its impact on processes and institutions.
▪ What distinguished the 1996 plan from the Arkansas effort was its sheer magnitude.
similar
▪ These rises were similar in magnitude to the effects of intracolonic deoxycholate in this study.
▪ Media influences on relative preferences for Conservative and Labour were always significant, usually similar in magnitude but opposite in sign.
▪ One can not help reflecting what would happen nowadays in a problem of similar magnitude.
■ NOUN
earthquake
▪ One of the city's best known landmarks, the Space Needle, was built to handle a 9.1 magnitude earthquake.
▪ A 5.4-magnitude earthquake hits southern Oregon, killing a motorist whose pickup was hit by falling rock.
quake
▪ A 5.8-magnitude quake rocks the Livermore area east of San Francisco, damaging a nuclear weapons laboratory.
▪ In California's San Fernando Valley, a 6.5-magnitude quake leaves 65 people dead.-March 27, 1964.
▪ A 6.3-magnitude quake in Long Beach, Calif., kills 115 people.
▪ The 5.4-magnitude quake hit at 12: 42 p.m. and was centered about 60 miles south of the capital.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Decisions of this magnitude should not be taken by one person alone.
▪ I cannot emphasize too strongly the magnitude of this problem.
▪ The oil spillage in the Gulf was of such magnitude that its effects will last for decades.
▪ We've never dealt with a problem of this magnitude before.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But this is not meant to belittle the magnitude of the adaptive radiations that took place in the Vendian and Cambrian periods.
▪ Fortunately there is a good comparison star of magnitude 6.6, also in the bowl.
▪ It has a B-type spectrum, and is usually just below the fourth magnitude.
▪ The budget deficit is no surprise, but the magnitude is.
▪ The earthquake registered a magnitude of 6.8, according to early estimates.
▪ This increases the magnitude of the vorticity, but because of continuity also reduces the cross-section of the vortex tube.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
magnitude

Magnitude \Mag"ni*tude\, n. [L. magnitudo, from magnus great. See Master, and cf. Maxim.]

  1. Extent of dimensions; size; -- applied to things that have length, breadth, and thickness.

    Conceive those particles of bodies to be so disposed amongst themselves, that the intervals of empty spaces between them may be equal in magnitude to them all.
    --Sir I. Newton.

  2. (Geom.) That which has one or more of the three dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness.

  3. Anything of which greater or less can be predicated, as time, weight, force, and the like.

  4. Greatness; grandeur. ``With plain, heroic magnitude of mind.''
    --Milton.

  5. Greatness, in reference to influence or effect; importance; as, an affair of magnitude.

    The magnitude of his designs.
    --Bp. Horsley.

  6. (Astron.) See magnitude of a star, below. Apparent magnitude

    1. (Opt.), the angular breadth of an object viewed as measured by the angle which it subtends at the eye of the observer; -- called also apparent diameter.

    2. (Astron.) Same as magnitude of a star, below.

      Magnitude of a star (Astron.), the rank of a star with respect to brightness. About twenty very bright stars are said to be of first magnitude, the stars of the sixth magnitude being just visible to the naked eye; called also visual magnitude, apparent magnitude, and simply magnitude. Stars observable only in the telescope are classified down to below the twelfth magnitude. The difference in actual brightness between magnitudes is now specified as a factor of 2.512, i.e. the difference in brightness is 100 for stars differing by five magnitudes.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
magnitude

c.1400, "greatness of size or character," from Latin magnitudo "greatness, bulk, size," from magnus "great" (see magnate) + -tudo, suffix forming abstract nouns from adjectives and participles (see -tude). Meaning "size, extent" is from early 15c. Of stars, "brightness," from 1640s.

Wiktionary
magnitude

n. 1 (context uncountable countable English) The absolute or relative size, extent or importance of something. 2 (context countable English) An order of magnitude. 3 (context mathematics English) A number, assigned to something, such that it may be compared to others numerically 4 (context mathematics English) Of a vector, the norm, most commonly, the two-norm. 5 (context astronomy English) The apparent brightness of a star (on a negative, logarithmic scale); apparent magnitude 6 (context seismology English) A measure of the energy released by an earthquake (e.g. on the Richter scale).

WordNet
magnitude
  1. n. the property of relative size or extent; "they tried to predict the magnitude of the explosion"

  2. a number assigned to the ratio of two quantities; two quantities are of the same order of magnitude if one is less than 10 times as large as the other; the number of magnitudes that the quantities differ is specified to within a power of 10 [syn: order of magnitude]

  3. relative importance; "a problem of the first magnitude"

Wikipedia
Magnitude

Magnitude may refer to:

In mathematics:

  • Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object
  • Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector
  • Scalar (mathematics), a quantity defined only by its magnitude
  • Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction
  • Order of magnitude, the class of scale having a fixed value ratio to the preceding class

In astronomy:

  • Magnitude (astronomy), a measure of brightness and brightness differences used in astronomy
  • Apparent magnitude, the calibrated apparent brightness of a celestial object
  • Absolute magnitude, the brightness of a celestial object corrected to a standard luminosity distance
  • Instrumental magnitude, the uncalibrated apparent magnitude of a celestial object
  • Photographic magnitude, the brightness of a celestial object corrected for photographic sensitivity, symbol m
  • Magnitude of eclipse or geometric magnitude, the size of the eclipsed part of the Sun during a solar eclipse or the Moon during a lunar eclipse

As an earthquake unit of measure:

  • Richter magnitude scale, the energy of an earthquake
  • Moment magnitude scale, based on the seismic moment
  • Surface wave magnitude, based on surface waves

In popular culture:

  • Magnitude (Community), a recurring character from the television series Community
Magnitude (mathematics)

In mathematics, magnitude is the size of a mathematical object, a property by which the object can be compared as larger or smaller than other objects of the same kind. More formally, an object's magnitude is an ordering (or ranking) of the class of objects to which it belongs.

Magnitude (Community)
  1. redirect List of Community characters#Magnitude

Category:Fictional African-American people

Usage examples of "magnitude".

In here, his body motionless, his affinity expanding his consciousness through bitek processors and incorporated brains, his mentality was raised by an order of magnitude.

And suppose it to be true that the Soul is the appraiser, using Magnitude as the measuring standard, how does this help us to the conception of Time?

Big Screen was like an electroshock cattle prod hammered down the earthquake faults of human identity which ripple and shudder at magnitude ten and slip and slide and pulverize and resettle into new and rarely improved and NEVER stable identities and wait for the next inevitable twitch and shudder that will send reality sprawling once again like pieces of ice flying around a high-speed blender and create a new and even more unstable formation and reinforce the creeping paranoia that has flooded the dazed soul that WAS you but has become something else, something different THAT was what FILM could do.

Knapp has shown that they were protracted to include matters relating to Bowring and long posterior to the period covered by the autobiography, and that the magnitude of these additions compelled him to divide the book in two.

There is here none of the homogeneity which is the property of magnitude, and the necessary condition of measurement, giving a view of the less in the bosom of the more.

I hoped in 1942, or even if it had never been tried, the attempt to cross the Channel in 1943 would have led to a bloody defeat of the first magnitude, with measureless reactions upon the result of the war.

The micrometeoroid count alone was several orders of magnitude higher than in open space.

A Swiss researcher, Isabelle Schib, had taken the old models of morphogenesis that had led to software like Zelda, refined the technique by several orders of magnitude, and applied it to human genetic data.

And even when recognized at last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse.

Ascertain from statistics the small proportion of the region which has yet been brought into cultivation, and also the large and rapidly increasing amount of products, and we shall be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the prospect presented.

The chief obstacle in the way of this ideal is Anglo-Saxon prudery, and, perhaps, the reader will not be persuaded that education for parenthood is our greatest educational need to-day, more especially for girls, until he or she has been persuaded of the magnitude of the preventable evils which flow from our present neglect of this matter.

Furthermore, for maximum efficiency operating speeds and temperatures whole orders of magnitude greater than the piston engine were needed.

The most relaxed Preservationist is an order of magnitude more security-conscious than our most diligent supporter.

We reflect within ourselves there is life, there is intellect, not in extension but as power without magnitude, issue of Authentic Being which is power self-existing, no vacuity but a thing most living and intellective--nothing more living, more intelligent, more real--and producing its effect by contact and in the ratio of the contact, closely to the close, more remotely to the remote.

With numbers: that is, with magnitudes and quantification, with all that scientific observations are about.